In some application development platforms, customers can compose rich user interface (UI) applications without writing any code. Such application development platforms may bring together document and data capture, enterprise content management (ECM), business processes management (BPM), search and analytics, collaboration, customer communications, and records management to provide decision makers with immediate access to relevant and reliable information, streamline customer interactions for increased satisfaction and retention, automate business processes for reduced cycle times and decreased operating costs, and ensure completeness and accuracy of content for minimal risk of errors and non-compliance.
One example of such an application development platform is Documentum™ xCelerated Composition Platform (Documentum xCP), available from Open Text, headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Documentum xCP is a solution development platform for rapidly building and deploying content-centric applications that manage the entire lifecycle of enterprise information to help customers work smarter and faster. This solution development platform provides a streamlined, scalable technology for rapid, repeatable application development and deployment of cloud-ready solutions that can be adapted as needs evolve. Other application development platforms are also available.
In typical browser-based applications, communication is limited to within a single tab (or single page) of a browser (which, as skilled artisans can appreciate, refers to any computer program with a graphical user interface for displaying HyperText Markup Language (HTML) files and accessing information on the World Wide Web). That is, in typical browser-based applications, there is not a streamlined, efficient way that UI widgets on two different pages opened in two different tabs can communicate with each other. This often results in stale data on a page or pages opened in different tabs of a browser.
In some examples of a browser-based application, multiple browser tabs maybe opened with various data items populated in each. Because communication is limited to within a single tab (or single page) of the browser, other tabs (or pages) are not updated in response to a user's interactions with a particular tab (or page). Consequently, stale data is shown in other tabs (or pages) of the browser-based application. This data staleness can be problematic for several reasons.
For example, suppose a user has multiple tabs of a browser-based application open on their computer, but is logged out of the browser-based application in one tab. Since other open tabs are unaware that the user is logged out of the browser-based application, all the other open tabs will continue to show pages of the browser-based application. In another example, if a user changed their role in a particular tab, information (e.g., menus, windows, etc.) displayed in that particular tab may be changed accordingly. However, because other open tabs are unware of the user's change to that particular tab, the other open tabs are not updated to reflect this change and will continue to show pages of the user's previous role and stale information.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for innovations and improvements to application development platforms in enterprise computing environments.